More from Fr. Dubay, S.M.
Father Dubay is a treasure to those of us seeking closer union with God. He speaks clearly, if at a very high level, about the necessities and the realities of the spiritual life. Witness this:
from Seeking Spiritual Direction Chapter 2: The Key Priniciple of Mediation Father Thomas Dubay, S. M.Anyone who is moderately attuned to the things of God knows from experience how we resist personal change for the better. Perhaps we do not set our minds explicitly to a refusal, but we nonetheless cling to what we are in the spiritual life. If the reader has any doubt about this general trait, a simple question might shed some light: "Am I significantly better right now than I was a year ago? Have I made any concerted effort to improve, to get rid of my faults?. . . What has this to do with spiritual direction? People find the path to God only if the really love truth, if they shape their minds and wills to moral rectitude, if they follow the light wherever it leads, if they embrace reality revealing itself, even when the embrace implies hardship, suffering, and unpopularity.
Hard words for hard times. Or is that hard words pointing the way to better times? Only in the pursuit of God does life begin to have meaning. Only in the realization that every moment is permeated with grace, with gifts, with opportunities, and with His presence can we begin to understand the shape of our existence. Life is at base meaningless if God is not the end-all, be-all. Everything else fades and vanishes. Treasures here on Earth are for the moment only, on loan from God not merely for our own betterment, but for the betterment of every person we meet. When we fail in this, we fail in the only important thing we have to do in life. And such failure is bitter, bitter fruit.
